


clovoyants

by endae



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Divination, Family, Fluff, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Late Season One/Early Season Two, Light Angst, Magic, Pre-Episode: s02e11 Not What He Seems, Sibling Bonding, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27336529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endae/pseuds/endae
Summary: When Dipper finds an incomplete entry in the Journal, it's a mission he knows is well worth their time. Determined to get to the heart of it, the twins venture into the forest for a flower that can tell them the future, but leave with a few more questions than they do answers. Pre-NWHS.
Relationships: Dipper Pines & Mabel Pines
Comments: 13
Kudos: 54





	clovoyants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mysterytwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterytwin/gifts).



> A rewrite of a gift for my dear friend [superish](https://superish.tumblr.com/) \- sending you my love always, especially this year ❤️
> 
> In regards to the timeline of this within canon, I was aiming to capture that late season one/early season two feel, but you can pretty much slip it anytime before Ford's reveal!

* * *

It’s a few weeks in Gravity Falls before it’s a day they have to themselves.

Well. ‘To themselves,’ loosely.

To Dipper.

It’s halfway through knitting a sweater that Dipper decidedly chooses to burst into their room, a force so sudden that she nearly jumps out of her own skin. Mabel only has a second to mourn the stitch she’s dropped before he rushes up to her bedside, greeting her with a backpack, the Journal, and an excuse to leave the Shack.

For once, Stan’s given them the luxury of spending the weekend however they’d like…which of course, meant a grueling hike through the foothills with no end in sight.

“Come on Mabel, we’re almost there!”

“You said that three hours agooooo…” she moans, dramatically wiping away at the sweat beads forming along her forehead.

The boundaries outside of town aren’t places they venture beyond often, but when they do, it’s an occasion. A place fostering size-changing crystals surely held more secrets than what the Author detailed, but the opportunities to go scope them out are rare.

There’s a lot that drags them out of the Shack on the days when there’s nothing to do.

Today, it’s an incomplete thought in the Journal, of an alleged magic flower that could tell them the future — but how much being the question to answer.

Dipper whips his head back to face her _(“It’s only been an hour!”),_ his obsession with this prevailing over any hope for an answer. But what he lacks in patience he makes up for in empathy, slowing down enough for her to catch up to him.

A touch more, when he extends a hand back to help tug her up to his pace.

“It can’t be much longer. We’ve gotta find it soon anyway, so we can crush it into a liquid since that part takes forever.”

“If we don’t find it soon, my legs will _be_ a liquid,” she counters, peering up into the canopy of the forest.

The farther they venture in, the less intense the rays. When the last trickles of light fade behind the leaves, she breathes a sigh of something different. Good. The relief of the shade is instant and gracious, the cooling kiss of the forest like a long overdue welcome. Without the sun beating down on them, her thoughts drift closer to their end goal.

They needed four or five signs to tell them they were on the right track. A certain part of the river. Some type of path.

And…a whirlpool? Something like that.

“Trust me, it’s around here somewhere.”

The deeper part of the forest was something else. Where anomalies came in higher concentrations closer to town, its outskirts were far more serene. Innocent ones — mere whispers in the Journal — pass them without incident, moments of shared understanding before they disappear between the bushes. Another day will call them back here, for them.

The sounds of Gravity Falls fade with the trail they leave behind them, the bustling of townsfolk slowly interchanged with the ambience of the forest.

They trek farther and deeper, but Mabel drinks in the sight of the greenery faster than her brother. Where his eyes burrow into the Journal with an occasional scan of the surroundings, Mabel keeps hers upright and wide to take in the scenery as they pass it.

“It’s pretty out here, huh?” she comments aloud, glancing the treetops. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen birds like these back home.”

He doesn’t hear her. 

_“‘…foretold of an accident…blurred but thorough…’”_ he mutters, forcing back a gasp after each sentence. His expression cycles through a range of emotions, none straying too far from disbelief. He shakes his head. “This is incredible. From how he describes it, it must have all came true…”

“It’s so green out here, too! And not like “fake grass” mini-golf green, like real, _actual_ green!”

_‘...the more I engaged, the more I questioned. Are the bad omens the only ones revealed to you…?’_

“—And these butterflies!”

He glances her way, deadpanning. _“Mabel.”_

“Oopse, sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to butt in!” she apologizes, sincere. Her remorseful front only lasts a second before it changes to something perplexed. “I’ll get back to…Umm…What are we supposed to be looking for again?”

Dipper sighs, thumbing through the Journal before flipping it to flash her one of the pages he’s been staring at all afternoon.

“They’re called Clovoyants,” he starts, tapping the drawing. “According to the Author, these flowers supposedly have divination properties that let you see into the future. But to do that, you have to turn it into a potion.”

Mabel squints at the diagram, hand firm on her chin, inquisitive. A purple spiky-looking thing, no bigger than the pad of her thumb. Blaming it solely on the impending heatstroke, the name clicks with her pitifully late.

“Oh! So it looks like a clover.”

“Right. But it’s a Clovoyant.”

“But it looks like a clover. Gotcha.”

Armed with an image, Mabel scouts ahead of them both. Dipper ducks his head back into the Journal’s pages, voice muffling.

“Keep your eyes peeled, they’re pretty small.”

“Like a banana ready to _split_ ,” she replies, coarse. As if to sell her enthusiasm, she pries them open with her thumb and index fingers, scanning the trail ahead.

The front doesn’t last long. It’s as Mabel leads the way that she spots the spectacle first, her hands falling to cradle her face instead. Where her eyes light up like stars, Dipper’s darken the deeper he reads into the passage, the Author’s turmoil stained in its ink.

And maybe that’s when it hits him, the bleeding tension between the pages he’s left behind.

_‘“…an absolute mistake to have used it. It was made clear to me from my visions that I was indeed in grave danger…”’_

For the first time since they set off, there’s a tug of reluctance to press forward.

“What did you see…?” Dipper asks, low, as if the pages could talk right back to him. “What were you so afraid of _that you hid this...?_ ”

Ahead of him, Mabel emits a high-pitched squeal that pulls him out of his daze.

“Ohmygosh, look at all these flowers!” she marvels, spinning carefree at the heart of them with her arms spread wide at either side of her.

To that, he’ll glance over the surroundings for more than a second this time. She isn’t wrong — what was endless green before, like magic, had begun to pop with color. Like confetti of the forest, clusters of small pastel flowers peppered the grasses, like a trail for them to follow. Not the ones they were looking for just yet, but a convincing sign they were headed in the right direction.

Even more so, by the clearing in the heart of the path.

_‘_ _What the…?’_

From the center, it calls out to them. A sudden pinwheel of flowers, transitioning from red to blue, yellow to white. Pink and periwinkle, and every shade in between. Like someone had rolled up the color spectrum, the petals bleed and blend with perfect variation before and after every hue.

Mabel squats to the ground to inspect them up close, not daring to step on any.

“Huh. That’s weird. This thing in the middle, it looks kind of like…”

“…Like a whirlpool. Like the one he mentions in the Journal—” Dipper says, connecting the dots. His eyes dart ahead, determined. “We’re close. We’re _really_ close.”

With renewed vigor, he charges past Mabel, with her jumping up to follow behind him. Almost manic, his eyes flick back and forth obsessively between the path and the map detailed in the entry. Whatever nerves had been slow building the whole way, they disintegrate with the fresh adrenaline coursing his veins.

Even Mabel seems to pick up on the cues too, the landmarks around them. They’re resonating with some familiar descriptions, exactly like the ones he’d been reciting before their hike.

“So assuming we’re not totally and helplessly lost,” Mabel begins, pointing to the stream to their left, “—that’s the fork in the river that that empties into Gravity Falls Lake.”

“Right.”

Then to the weathered rock path, adjacent to it. “That’s the trail to the gnome tavern.”

“Affirmative.”

“And that’s that weird tree that looks like Godzilla and an octopus fighting,” she says, pointing to the…Author’s oddly fitting description of said tree. “So if that’s the case, then—”

“ _This is it!”_

Mabel’s bumps into his back as he yells it, stopping dead in her tracks just as he had. Nearly losing her balance, she grabs for the strap of his backpack, pulling herself upright to peer over his shoulder.

Sure enough, it’s waiting.

Flowers. Hundreds of them. _Thousands._ An ocean of the very specimen they’d been searching for, Clovoyants blanket the grove before them. The afternoon light casts them in a mystic glow, like a spotlight saved solely for this moment. Confined within the thick borders of the trees, it stretches wide with promise, as if someone had written their names all over the place.

Mabel breathes in behind him, awestruck. _“Wow.”_

The small purple flowers all but overtake the grasses, and the possibilities dawn on him. How many times they could experiment with this. The secrets of tomorrow, all one pluck away. Tangled with other wild varieties, it would take a while to sort through the bunches, but without a shadow of a doubt, these had to be them.

His eyes grow at their waiting treasure trove. _Jackpot._

“Alright Mabel, let’s get to work,” he says, containing his excitement as best he can. Still, he grins wide. “Oh man, I can’t wait to try this.”

“So just pluck ‘em?”

He hands a tote bag her way, blind. “Yeah. We’ll save all the hard work for the Shack.”

Before he wanders too deep in his own head, it’s right this moment she knows when to keep him in check. Taking her own precautions, Mabel accepts the bag from him, and in turn, elbows him gently in the side.

“Just be careful where you leave that stuff, okay? The last thing I need is Waddles seeing into the future.”

“I can only promise I’ll try,” he jokes, tossing the Journal and its open page to the grass beneath him. “Start wherever, I’ll stay here. We’ll check back in ten.”

She lets out some giddy noise when she bolts for the first patch of flowers her eyes land on. Mabel plants herself a ways away from him, but dives right in, picking them one by one.

Dipper sinks to sit criss-cross in the grass to observe them up close, cupping one with his hand.

It’s a pretty flower. Much like the name implied, it looked an awful lot like clover if it weren’t for the excessive number of...sparkles. A lot like glitter, but he thinks the moment he voices that thought out loud, Mabel will pick them all for her own means before he gets the chance to examine even one.

Ten minutes in, the pile at his side builds. Perfect. With this and the abundance left over, they’d be out in no time.

In his peripheral, he sees Mabel already starting to stand from her spot in the distance, a blurry bundle of the flowers in her hand.

Dipper clicks his pen, incessant.

“Okay, so if I’ve crunched all the numbers right, we need exactly one eighty-fifth of our body weight, and to crush it up with a mortar and pestle made of marble. I think Grunkle Stan had one in the kitchen cupboard, so we’re all good on that end. Then we need to leave it on ice overnight, let it get to room temperature tomorrow…”

Dipper’s about to turn to her when he’s stopped by the sudden exposure of his head to the sunbeams.

But before he has the chance to question it, he’s halted by some type of substitute, a weight — of stems, leaves, and from the scent, what he could only guess were flowers — resting in lieu of it.

“Boop.”

He…pauses. Mabel towers above him, his pine tree cap snug beneath her arm.

“Look how pretty you are!” she chirps, clasping both hands to cradle against her cheek.

Curious, he raises both hands to the top of his head, feeling for whatever she’s just placed on it. He has a rough guess, a suspicion confirmed by the circular shape alone, and even more so when he brings it into view.

A flower crown.

Undoubtedly crafted out of a few Clovoyants, mixed with some others.

It’s…a start.

“Uh…Mabel? What are you doing?” he asks, midway through a confused chuckle. It’s a funny visual for him, admittedly, and for that she’ll get a raised eyebrow. “It doesn’t work like this. We need to crush them up into a potion.”

“And we will...” she answers, taking the headpiece from him. Rather than returning his hat, she sets it back on his head again, and then gestures out towards the meadow. “We’ve got a lot to work with.”

With that thought hanging, she rests her hands on her hips and closes her eyes, smiling off somewhere in the distance.

He coughs aloud, filling the silent, awkward gap.

“Yeeeeah, so we really can’t waste too much time, so let’s wrap it up here, head back and—”

And won’t get too far. It’s as Dipper swings his legs around to rise to his feet that Mabel plants both her hands on his shoulders to sit him back down. His hat drops from her hands, falling with a muted thump against the grass.

He eyes her, puzzled.

She bends down to meet him at eye level. Mabel’s usually bubbly exterior is replaced with something just a touch sterner, and even more so when she leaves one hand on his shoulder, squeezing.

“Listen. Bro— I know you’re neck-deep in all this mystery stuff. Believe me, I get it. But have you even had a single moment of peace since we got here?”

He can already hear the lecture forming in her head, and his expression sours. _Great._

“I’ve had my ‘moments of peace,’” he contests, throwing up air quotes. “It’s called _late night reading._ ”

She mimics what he thinks is supposed to sound like a buzzer, and frowns. “Wrong answer.”

Fair enough. But before he gets the chance to protest, she rises, sighing aloud and lightly slapping a hand to her face.

“Look, I’m gonna grab some more flowers to put in this,” Mabel says, motioning to his crown, “so one: you stay put. And two: humor me. _Don’t_ touch the Journal, you got it? I swear, it’s like you can’t leave it alone for five minutes.”

Alright. He’ll humor her.

Marking the page with the monocle, he closes the worn red cover to place it aside. “Fine. You’re on.”

“Good. Now close your eyes.”

He does, not without rolling them first. Rather than taking off, he hears her saunter around to kneel behind him. With what he could only describe as rough tenderness, Mabel calmly jostles his shoulders and back.

“And _relaaaax_ a little, will you? At this rate, you’re gonna be as stiff as Grunkle Stan.”

With that crooked image in mind, Mabel bustles off someplace else, the swishing of grass trailing behind her. She disappears between the trees, and it’s only him and the graces of what she’s left behind.

The forest sounds start up as she leaves, and the world feels a little softer.

At first, it’s almost too much. Too quiet. He’s too used to the clamor. Too used to the laughing and yelling that’s been so commonplace all summer. Their misadventures rarely went otherwise. Fitting enough, Dipper thinks, it comes at what’s arguably been the first time since they’d gotten to town that something went according to plan. Just another reason to relish in it.

Some part of his subconscious seems to agree with him — there’s a voice in the back of his head eager to give into it. Let the walls drop for once. Let this happen.

_Let go,_ if only for a minute.

_(something inside of him, however hesitant, does.)_

It’s freeing.

Like the very spirit of this place reached out to cradle him, a soothing warmth envelopes him. What begins as a tingle in the base of his head travels in gradual waves down his spine, branching off throughout him. He feels the difference. His jaw doesn’t feel as stiff. The brittle tension always lining his shoulders isn’t as tight. There’s even a touch more fluidity in the places she’d just tried to loosen up. Slowly but surely, he eases into it.

When it isn’t the late afternoon breezes, it’s the birds. Between the branches, he hears chirps he can’t put a name too. When it isn’t the birds, it’s the bubbling from the brook they followed to get here. The lulling hum of the dragonflies. It’s quiet here, but it isn’t.

This…was kind of nice, actually.

Piedmont really didn’t have a lot of what Gravity Falls did.

Time passes in its own strange way — and that’s assuming it hasn’t dropped him into a different pocket dimension entirely. He wouldn’t put it past this town. Between the heartbeat of the forest and his own within his chest, he doesn’t even register that Mabel’s returned until he feels her playing with the crown atop his head again.

“So do you see anything yet?” she asks quietly, smoothing out a part of his hair. “I know we’ve gotta mash it up, but maybe it’s good enough like this.”

“Still pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.”

“Well— try.”

He breathes another sigh, slightly pointed. Why was she being so relentless about this? Lost as he’ll ever be, he shakes his head to her, but still, he plays along. As he expects, it’s a swirl of earthy colors waiting behind his lids, no different from the few minutes before he falls asleep.

Nothing. No visions of grandeur, of a diploma with the highest honors or his own ghost hunting show. But a small, mischievous lightbulb goes off in his head.

There’s still some fun he could have with this. He smirks.

“Actually yeah, I think I see something. I think it’s you?”

“Oh yeah?”

Dipper shudders. “ _Yikes_ , I thought your taste in fashion was off-the-wall now. Wait a couple of years.”

Mabel shoves his shoulder for that, but never with intent of hurting him. He hears her suppressing a laugh.

“What else?”

“You’re…going to make more sweaters this summer,” he says, vague. “And even more questionable drinks…”

“It’s like you’re not even trying!” she half-scolds, tucking a few more of the flowers in. Insistent on something real, she plugs them into any opening left in his crown. “What about now?”

“…you’ll be a hit in a high school,” he drones on, tone mocking. “President of the art club, and…”

And…something else that didn’t feel too good.

It’s only as he takes it seriously for an honest moment that it dawns on him: he _does_ see something. He can’t pinpoint what exactly, but he sees harsh colors. Trees, lots of them, someplace outside the Shack and…

_Mabel, curled up out in the forest. The sun’s just short of fallen over the hills but he sees her, flush against the bark of a tree in bleeding red light. Her body swallowed whole by a visit to Sweater Town. In the distance, there’s a figure looming in the shadows, his sister lowering her collar to see-_

“Dipper?”

He shoots his eyes open, a breath caught in his throat. Mabel stills the second she feels him tense up, fingers frozen in place. His eyes drift out into a forest greener than when he’d shut them, as if searching for an answer within it. The dizziness grips him, for a moment.

Clueless, Mabel pokes his forearm.

“Well don’t leave me in suspense here! What’d you see?!”

_What_ did _he see?_

“Uh. I’m not…really sure,” he lies, cringing at how fake it sounds. He knows that Mabel sees right through his poor façade, and shakes her head. She mumbles something under her breath that he can’t completely make out, but with the subtle ring still in his ear, he has no chance to.

_‘What_ was _that…?’_

“Okay fine, be that way,” she concedes, glum. There’s a quiet sweeping of hands on hands, ridding herself of any leafy residue. “Aaaand I’m done now. You can look for real.”

Mabel rises from her knees behind him, his cue to reach for the final outcome. Delicately pinching at the base, he brings it into view just as she starts to peek back into his as well. Immediately, he can see the difference. Where there were gaps before, Mabel’s woven a few more of the flowers into what were sparse patches only moments ago.

It’s more elaborate than anything he could’ve done in a few minutes, and for that, he’s admittedly impressed.

“See, now wasn’t that nice? Just absorbing the moment?” Mabel prods, seating herself on the grass in front of him. She busies herself picking at the grass near her ankles, absentminded.

It’s silent, for a moment. She sighs.

“Look, Dipper…I know how badly you wanna solve all the whacky stuff in this town — believe me. I do too. But we _are_ on a summer break. So you should…try taking one some time, you feel me?”

Comedically, she hushes to a whisper, cupping one hand to the side of her mouth.

“Or — just hear me out — a _nap_. Just one.”

She says it like it’s a joke, but her tone’s just off enough to know she means it. She pleads at him with those eyes hiding more than they lead on, furrowed brows that give her away. They’ve always said more than she ever needed to — and the message reaches him. With how peaceful he’s felt out here, it puts it all in perspective, what he’s weathered.

The near obsession with cracking every code. Leaving no stone unturned, and double checking them after the fact. Scrutinizing page after page for answers that may not exist.

It wears on him. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel it.

“You’re so busy being busy that I don’t know if…you really see what it’s doing to you.”

“No, I hear you,” he falters, eyes falling somewhere else. If only to reassure her— “I really do.”

She gives him a small nod, but goes silent. They both do. To draw the attention anywhere but here, Dipper’s eyes fall to her crown in his hands again. Eager to change the subject, he can change it to this. Give the praise where it’s deserved.

“You did a good job on this. I thought these things were hard to make.”

“Nope. I actually taught Candy and Grenda how to make ‘em just last week. It’s not that hard to teach either!”

She speaks of it so fondly, gleaming at her own handiwork. All while she basks proudly at her creation, Dipper finds himself eying the bunch she didn’t touch.

It dawns on him, slowly.

Mabel’s admiration of the scenery the whole way. How he’d brushed it off each time. How insistent she was of him to sit still and unwind for a second, and how much of a protest he’d put up before even giving her that.

Hindsight is twenty-twenty.

And if it’s real, he shouldn’t have needed a psychic crown to recognize that. Because sitting here as he was, in the middle of this haven, it was almost beginning to feel like this was the universe telling him to relax for a moment.

Like he wasn’t the only one with an agenda out here.

A pang of guilt shoots through him, what it implied. All this time, she was trying to help, and he was too stubborn to see it for what it was. As if it would rectify it, he places her crown back on his head, somber.

Moments of peace. The two of them haven’t shared too many either, since summer began.

“…Here,” he finally says, handing her some of his own plucked flowers. “Teach me then.”

It catches her off-guard. Brief surprise fills her features before a skeptic squint taking its place. Mabel blinks at him, craning her head to one side.

“…Really? _You_ want to learn how to make one. _A flower crown_.”

“Sure. Why not?” he insists, gathering the spare pile in his lap. Just as she had to the field before them, he gestures to it with a bob of his head. “You said it yourself, we’ve got a lot to work with here.”

And maybe that’s enough to override her doubt. Because the moment he says it, her poker-face fades with the breeze. Touched at his genuine interest, maybe, but it doesn’t linger on her face for long.

She reaches for his hand, starry eyed.

“’Kay, so first you’re gonna take the stem of the longest one…yeah, tie it around, just like that…”

Mabel guides him through the motions, twirling her fingers and pointing to knots, to bundles. It’s a process that she makes look too easy, and given how quickly she’d put her own together, that’s an understatement. He’s clumsy following her instruction. There’s no telling how long it takes, but it’s definitely more than what it took for his.

Not a total surprise.

But his efforts are rewarded with something adequately nice. It’s an amateur-looking thing of too many failed attempts dressed with enough flowers to mask the botched petals underneath. It has double the amount hers did, if only to cover up the ones already wilting beneath them.

A little pathetic in his eyes, but Mabel doesn’t seem to share that thought.

“Aww see, you did it!” she cheers, clapping her hands together in delight. “And look, now you’ve got one to bring back to Wendy!”

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, but not for that.

A sweet thought. It’s just like her. Generous at its core, always searching to make someone else happier. The light in her eyes shines a little brighter when they fall to his hands, and it’s when they do that something inside of him gives. Mabel beams at his crown with more adoration than it deserves, but he doesn’t let the observation slide.

It only takes a heartbeat to decide before he leans forward to rest it atop her head.

“Boop.”

And in a heartbeat more, he honors that. The gesture catches her off guard when he does, the flash of surprise in her face vanishing before he gets the chance to savor it.

It’s far sloppier than the one she’d made for him, but Mabel doesn’t seem to care either way. There’s a pink tinge that fills the edges of “her cheeks, and an airy laugh that sounds like a song.

“Well how about that,” she says, grinning. “We match.”

Still sitting criss-cross, Dipper leans back to plant both palms against the grass. “Your turn now, _O Mystic Mabel._ What does the future hold?”

There’s a glint in Mabel’s eyes before she closes them, straightening her back. It’s as she falls into her own trance that the breeze chooses to sweep through the meadow, a rustling of branches and leaves to set the mood. 

“Hmm….” she bites her lip, “you’re gonna get four hours of sleep tonight.”

“ _Cheating_. Next.”

She pouts, but reverts to her thinking face once more.

“You’re gonna go monster hunting in the forest a gazillion more times…”

“Even _I_ could’ve told you that.”

“You’ll join some nerdy club,” she copies him, just as mocking, “mathletes star of the century, and…”

And Mabel freezes the way he had, sudden. Dipper doesn’t miss the complete shift in the air. Doesn’t miss the way she tenses up, and the moment he catches on, sits back up immediately. It’s a smile before it’s something far more disturbed.

“What? What is it?”

It’s a stomach-turning pause before it’s something that shakes him to his core.

“…You’re… _going to find out who the Author is.”_

Her change in tone reaches him before any the words do. Maybe to protect him.

But it hits him. It hits him, and it hits him _hard_ , the weight of her revelation coming with such a force that it could take him to the ground if he wasn’t already sitting. The sheer magnitude of it renders his whole brain numb, like static desperately searching for a frequency to lock on to.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. These were supposed to be insignificant. Superficial. What his next bruise would come from. What her next sweater would be. What tomorrow, and _only_ tomorrow held. It wasn’t supposed to plant some apprehensive seed in his gut of what’s to come. It wasn’t supposed to amount in some promise that he hasn’t allowed himself to believe in.

From its cartoonish expression only seconds ago, Mabel’s face softens to something pensive.

His heart won’t stop pounding. Mabel had ticks when she was messing with him. She giggled. She couldn’t hold a straight face even if her life depended on it. But it’s somehow seated the way she was now, eyes closed and hands folded, that she doesn’t cross him as anything but genuine.

Within the clutches of her premonition — however unsettling it might be — she even smiles.

“He’s…everything you imagined he’d be. I think…he’s even a little like you.”

It’s too much. A million questions race through his head, each more dire than the one before it. What does he look like? _What happened to him?_ The ‘whens’ the ‘whys’ all but flood him, the dead ends and empty mysteries they’ve had yet to unveil.

But at the risk of breaking her concentration, Dipper holds his silence, however painful.

“I’m not really sure…if you’re gonna meet him in person or in photographs, but…you’ll get a little closer than where you are now.”

Her tone pitches towards the end, if only to give him some shred of hope.

If she’s shaken by her own premonition, she’s doing a good job of hiding it.

All while he’s ready to come undone, Mabel sits oblivious to it, deep in thought. Without witness to his own crumbling composure in front of her, she remains in place, tranquil as can be. Whatever she sees nearly holds her captive, a meditative state he sees her fight to snap out of.

At long last, Mabel opens her eyes. The rays of the sun catch in them when she does, and she squints, her gaze floating to his instead.

“Good?”

_‘Maybe…these really did work without the mixture...’_

They won’t know. Not for now, at least. He nods, spacey. “Yeah. Good.”

“Ready to head back?”

Another nod, before he rises to his feet. Dipper holds out a hand for her to take, just as he had the start of this. And just as before, she does, but the moment they connect, something feels different.

Lighter.

Mabel sways as she stands, as if dizzy from her own vision too. Dipper tightens his hold on her hand as she does, eyes following as she groans and grabs for her head.

“Mabel?”

“’m fine. Just peachy,” she moans out, rubbing her temple. She looks the farthest thing from it, and for that, he’ll hang on a little longer. “Ugh, maybe you were right, Dipper…these flowers are pretty whack on their own. Maybe they don’t actually work right until you drink them.”

What he’d been insisting all afternoon, but it’s in the heartbeat that she suggests it that he wants nothing more than to be wrong. They’re drawing on farfetched conclusions. They have been this whole time.

She could be right. These all could have just been phony premonitions.

Maybe nothing they’ve seen so far was destined for reality, but…

_‘But what if?’_

Regaining her composure, Mabel gives a small bob of her head to him, a sign to let him know that it’s passed. Releasing his grip on her hand, he bends down to retrieve his hat from the ground, but with no burning desire to put it back on just yet.

Eyes set for home, they start, side by side.

The golden hour’s fallen over the forest. Its amber light streams through the canopy of the trees, imbues it with a dreamy aura of some lost and forgotten sanctuary. The kind you bottle up in hopes of replicating it someday, the aching intuition that you’ll never be able to entirely. The path home is a snapshot of the one they’d followed to get here, but he can’t shake the feeling that they’re leaving a different forest than what they entered.

There’s a magic flowing in these parts. He knows that much.

_(and he’s more right than he’ll ever know._

_Mabel Pines doesn’t see it, but when she walks the path home, flowers bloom in her footsteps. Minutes after she’s gone, they break from the soil, their petals turning to face her as if to chase for the sun itself._

_Dipper Pines doesn’t see it, but when he touches the bark of the trees to maneuver through them, his hands leave behind the ink of his soul, in swirls and glyphs only he can understand. They carry the spirit of the man they’ll spend weeks more searching for, but like a lifeline to bring him home, they stain deep within the wood.)_

In a final bout of determination, Dipper shuts his eyes one last time to focus it all in one place. From behind his lids, there’s something coming to light — quite literally, a glow in the distance growing more and more. A feeling that comes with it, just as soft.

The most he can make out, at first, is color. A scenery awash in pink, in comes to him in shades not so dissimilar from Mabel’s trademark. He’d be at peace with just that.

“Well…the future’s looking pretty bright, if I say so myself.”

He doesn’t see her, but senses when she turns to look his way.

“Yeah? What makes you say that?”

In perhaps the sharpest vision that’s come to him since she first put it on him, he makes out two figures — _them_ — in absolute certainty, facing each other. Both adorned in the very clothes that brought them to town, if only a little more worn than the first day. They’re smiling.

_‘“Awkward sibling hug?”’_

_‘“ **Sincere** sibling hug.”’_

It blurs and fades before it becomes something too clear, just as it had with the ones before. But the warmth it fills his chest with is a far cry from the dread that it had before. When the last wisps of it curl into oblivion, the calm it leaves with him settles somewhere deeper in his bones.

He smiles, shoving both hands into his vest pockets.

“Just a feeling.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, comments appreciated ♡
> 
> [Tumblr Link](https://endae.tumblr.com/post/166445195585/cloveoyants)   
>    
> 


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